Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Suddenly, Labour/MMM Alliance Promises 60,000 Jobs

Because a few weeks ago when Rama Sithanen was asked (scroll to 31m30s) how many jobs he would create in the first twelve months if he was to become the next finance minister -- God forbid -- he said he could not forecast that. He couldn't even give a rough estimation. Of course we can come up with a ballpark of how many jobs he might create because he's been FM for several years and we just have to look at his stats. Turns out we should expect around 7,200 jobs or 2.5X less than what Vishnu Lutchmeenaraidoo could create.

He also said that he would not be able to create jobs immediately. Hmm. We can estimate that too by looking at how many jobs were created in the first full calendar year -- we could look at monthly figures too -- he was in office in each one of his two terms. That number is around 8,300 jobs. But given that he messed up the economy so badly and that he increased unemployment every single year in his first mandate and in every full calendar year of his second that could be really hard to achieve.

Mr. Sithanen also says he will eradicate poverty. He said that before. I'm sure you remember he said he could do that in 7 years. The snag is that it's almost ten years since his bogus reforms have started. And far from eliminating poverty he has thrown an additional 22,000 Mauritians into it during his second term. That's about 350 people every four weeks. And his inflation record doesn't look too good.

So I guess they've thrown this number to look a lot less silly. And to try to be a bit less on the defensive. After lalyans lepep announced their 12 measures.